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By Joseph KornikPublished: Feb 8, 2016

The 2016 Seven Small Jewels: Eagle Hill Consulting

It’s a family affair at Eagle Hill Consulting. Melissa Jezior, President & CEO of the firm, co-founded the firm with her father, a lifelong consultant himself, back in 2003. At that time, he was recently retired and came out of retirement to co-found the firm. He’s still active at Eagle Hill today.

The two built the company to be a community of consultants rooted in family values, where employees are not just a number. As a mother of three, Jezior places a high value on work-life Balance. At Eagle Hill, consultants work, on average, 43 hours a week. In fact, Eagle Hill is the name of the street Jezior grew up on.

Today, Eagle Hill is a family-run, woman-owned company applying the best tools and methodologies of larger consultancies in the nimble environment—and with the personalized attention—of a smaller firm.

That description mirrors Jezior’s own work experience prior to 2003. She began her career as a consultant with Andersen Consulting. Then she moved to the West Coast and took a job with a dot-com start up until the tech bubble burst. At that point, she went back into consulting, this time with a mid-tier firm. After a few years, she moved back East and launched Eagle Hill.

“It was the culmination of my experiences that made me want to step out on my own. I had the base of working at Andersen and I loved the fact that it had this amazing reputation with verified methodologies that they cold draw upon,” she says. “When I went to an internet start-up, I saw a different side of the coin in that it was more entrepreneurial, innovative and employee driven.”

Finally, when she went back into consulting it was with a mid-tier firm and says she saw first-hand what that type of firm could bring to the table.

“I was really trying to mesh all of these experiences together to create a different kind of consultancy,” she says.

Under Jezior’s leadership, Eagle Hill has experienced an annual growth rate of 74 percent since 2010—and had 100 percent revenue growth in 2015.

And it’s not slowing down. The plan is to grow another 90 percent this year and add some 75 new employees, no small feat for any firm but even more daunting when you discover the emphasis Eagle Hill puts on the recruiting and hiring process.

“The growth is key, obviously, but to make sure that we stay focused on being still a best pace to work, we maintain what I would say is the most rigorous hiring process methodology I’ve ever seen,” Jezior says. “So, we are focused on not only recruiting and hiring the best people out there, but we also recruit on culture.”

Such as: Eagle Hill starts looking at someone’s career history beginning in high school and working all the way up through present day. The firm conducts four-hour tandem interviews with two Eagle Hill employees. And, if all that wasn’t enough, the firm will interview former teachers, colleagues and bosses all along the candidate’s career path.

Eagle Hill’s retention rate is 93 percent; employee satisfaction rate is 98 percent. And 100 percent of its people say the firm has a collaborative culture.

“The talent portion of this takes a ton of time but I’m relentless about the quality of the people we hire,” Jezior says. “So, this process culminates with having an amazing group of people working at Eagle Hill.”